BATESVILLE -- Over about six blocks of downtown Batesville's Main Street, anyone dining, shopping or even exercising can now log in free of charge to a wireless Internet connection after officials unveiled a novel service Tuesday.
The wireless public Internet service was designed to attract more people to a downtown district that over the past three years has witnessed a resurgence, with 18 then-vacant buildings now occupied and traffic on the rise, officials said.
Batesville Main Street Executive Director Joel Williams said the town is just the second in Arkansas, after Conway, to offer free Internet access throughout its downtown area. Other cities and towns may have sections of free Wi-Fi on a business-by-business basis, but Batesville's is continuous and offered through a single organization, Williams said.
The service marks the latest step in the ongoing revitalization of Batesville's Main Street -- which the Internet project's sponsor said was essentially "dead" in 2013 -- including a reopened classic movie theater, conversion of a fallen building into a public park and ongoing street resurfacing.
"I think that [free wireless Internet] will spark an interest," said Sherry Stott, co-owner of Big's, a sandwich shop on Main Street that opened in early 2014.
Stott and her husband, Dwayne, bought the restaurant at 101 Main Street in early 2015 and have watched the district come alive again. As their restaurant bustled with a dinner crowd during a special event, they spoke highly of their neighbors -- and competitors -- for creating a cordial, diverse stretch of businesses that together make downtown more appealing.
"For a long time, we were the only restaurant on this corner," Dwayne Stott said.
Batesville, a town of about 10,000 located on the White River about 70 miles west of Jonesboro, claims to be the oldest existing city in Arkansas. Main Street is located off U.S. 167. The highway into Batesville is lined by a string of high-rising signs advertising fast-food restaurants and franchised stores.
Many downtowns across the country, including Batesville's, suffered decades ago when department stores along other thoroughfares began to take business from those areas, which typically host more small business owners, said Bob Carius, former president of Main Street Batesville's board of directors.
Activity downtown has surged only recently, Carius said. He and Williams said that's because merchants and officials have bought into a cohesive vision to upgrade the area.
Along Main Street now are an array of jewelry stores, restaurants, a music store, a pawn shop, two gyms, a church, a private club allowed to serve alcohol in the otherwise-dry Independence County, and the recently revived Melba Theatre, which is offering free showings of holiday-themed movies in the run-up to Christmas.
Dwayne Stott said another way to improve Batesville's downtown could be shops and boutiques that cater to younger crowds so that the district might better appeal to college students.
Bad Boy Mowers, one of the city's largest employers, sponsored the free Wi-Fi project by committing about $10,000 over three years, said Scott Lancaster, general counsel for the company.
Williams said the arrangement would be re-evaluated and renegotiated after the initial three years.
The system can handle between 20 and 40 people at each of its seven access points, according to Mark Nelson of Keystone Data Technologies, the Batesville company that provided the hardware that relays Wi-Fi from a main antenna to remote nodes and to personal equipment, like laptops or cellphones. That would put the rough, maximum capacity at 280 people at one time.
No one lives along Batesville's Main Street right now, but a developer is converting empty space above an outdoors store into apartment units, Williams said. Future tenants could access the free Wi-Fi, but the service does have restrictions on most streaming video -- like Netflix -- in order to prevent the system from being frequently overwhelmed, Williams said.
Kim Williams, director of the Conway Downtown Partnership, said Conway has offered free Wi-Fi from about a dozen hot spots for about 10 years through a Conway Corp. service. The hot spots are located throughout the area, near places such as a boutique and a coffee shop.
"I see people tap into [public Wi-Fi] quite often," said Williams, whose office is near one hot spot.
Metro on 12/21/2016